


Domestic Terrorism

by marmalading



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explosions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24254227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmalading/pseuds/marmalading
Summary: Itachi struggles to understand art. At the very least, he can try to admire it.
Relationships: Deidara/Uchiha Itachi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61





	Domestic Terrorism

“Wear one of the sweaters you made,” Shisui had told him. “DIY keeps the scene alive.”

Itachi is not a part of the scene, and he doesn’t think he ever will be, no matter how many times he accompanies Shisui to shows at his friends’ punk house, and no matter how many times he stands behind Shisui as he listens to conversations he doesn’t understand and watches bands he’s never heard of, but he likes coming here and he likes hanging out, so he did his part and wore the cable knit one he made the other day.

Itachi recognizes most of the people in this basement as people he’s seen in this basement before. Except for Shisui, and, somehow through the dim lighting, the guy across the room who he saw outside the police station last week, who he had watched place a statue of a pig there only to destroy it with a small explosion minutes later.

He mentions this to Shisui, pointing to identify him.

“You saw _what_? Oh. Oh, you saw Deidara.” Shisui says. “He lives here sometimes.” Itachi accepts this as what is as much of an explanation as he’s going to get, and as much of one as he needs.

But he—Deidara, is now approaching them. He probably saw him pointing. Shisui notices and visibly braces himself.

“Do you fucking need something?” Deidara asks Itachi. He doesn’t look as angry as he does annoyed. Maybe it was the pointing.

“Hi, Deidara,” Shisui greets. “This is my cousin Itachi.” He sounds annoyed, too, but in a drawling, passive way.

“I saw you blow up that statue.” Itachi says.

“I know. I saw you take a picture of it. You’re not a fucking snitch, are you?”

Shisui cuts in, “He’s not a fucking snitch, Deidara. Leave him alone.”

Oh, Itachi is the source of brewing conflict. Actually, he can’t tell if these two had issues with each other before. They seem to have met.

This makes him feel more a part of the scene than his sweater ever could, honestly, but he tries to deescalate, for the sake of Shisui.

“It was a video, actually.” Like that’s the issue here. He pauses. Then adds, “ACAB.”

“ACAB,” Deidara agrees, but doesn’t seem convinced. He takes a step closer to Itachi. “Why’d you take the video, though?”

“I thought it was nice.” This is the truth. Also, he wanted to show Sasuke (who had also thought it was pretty nice).

“I blow up my statue in front of a police station. And you’re calling it _nice_?”

Maybe an underwhelming adjective choice. “Yes.”

“That’s it?” Deidara says, looking more upset than when he came over before. But in a different way now, with his eyebrows pushed together, bottom lip sticking out. Disbelief. Disappointment.

“Sorry.” Says Itachi. “I don’t understand a lot of art." He thinks this will make Deidara give up in the same way it makes Shisui resign himself to dejection when Itachi keeps asking questions about the graffiti the covers the walls or why nobody cleans up the piss stains on the ceiling or the pile of empty beer cans that takes up half the couch.

Conversely, Deidara looks thrilled.

“You thought it was art? Really?”

“I think so.” He says it like it’s a guess. Deidara seemed to take it as a compliment, but his swift change in mood is making Itachi second-guess his original analysis. Maybe it was just meant to be an act of domestic terrorism.

“There’s nothing else to get, then.” Deidara reassures him.

Itachi feels like he should have more questions. Deidara runs off, though, pushing himself into the crowd and disappearing before Itachi can think of what they are.

“He’s like that, I guess,” says Shisui.

“Like what?”

“A psychopath.”

Based on their short interaction, Itachi doesn’t really disagree with this. Still. “People say that about me sometimes.”

Shisui sighs. “They’re just being mean when they say that, though. Like, I’m being honest. Deidara’s a psychopath.”

Itachi interprets this as a warning.

A warning to which he does not listen, however, because after the show, Deidara finds him again, upstairs this time, as he trails behind Shisui.

“Hey!” Deidara shouts, loud enough to carry across the chatter. He’s sitting cross legged on the coffee table, holding a bottle of liquor and talking to a group of people sprawled across the floor and mismatched chairs. Itachi isn’t sure the call was meant for him until Deidara starts waving frantically as they make eye contact.

He wanders over. Deidara hops off the table and steps over one of his friends to approach him. Itachi watches his drink slosh around the clear bottle.

“You’re very beautiful.” Deidara says. He sounds sincere, but also, incredibly drunk, and if not by his slurred syllables, Itachi would’ve known by the way he sways in place as he stands.

“Thank you.” Itachi says. It’s really hot in here. Maybe he shouldn’t have worn the sweater.

“And! I’m not just saying that because you like my art.”

“Thank you.” Itachi says again.

Deidara takes a pull from the bottle in his hand, almost absently, like the burn of vodka had no effect on him. “Give me your phone.” Deidara says after a moment, putting out his free hand in front of his face. Itachi places his phone on top of his palm, noticing the tattoo of an open mouth that decorates it.

“Just like that, huh?” Deidara muses. “It’s not even unlocked,” he mutters, taking it and putting it in his pocket.

Well. Itachi can just buy another one, he thinks. “Did you just want to put your number in my phone? Or did you want my number?” he asks.

“ _No_ ,” Deidara denies. “Well. You can have it back if you come to my art show tomorrow night.”

“I would come anyways.” And he would. Sincerely.

Deidara gets his phone out again to return to him. “You’d fucking better.” He pushes it against Itachi’s chest. “Take it back. Eleven-pro-max-ass rich boy.” Itachi does and Deidara snaps his hand back, then spins around and stalks back over to the couch, where he drops onto some unsuspecting inhabitant’s lap.

Itachi finds Shisui waiting for him by the door.

“He invited me to his art show,” Itachi informs him, as they walk to Itachi’s car.

“He’s just gonna blow shit up somewhere.”

“Oh.”

“But go if you want,” Shisui backtracks. “I’ll come too, y’know? Support, the, uh, scene, I guess.”

Right. The scene.

-

Shisui picks him up the next night doesn’t say a lot on the way over. Itachi forgives him. It’s two in the morning.

Deidara’s “art show” takes place in an abandoned train yard. There’s a lot more people there than last night, and they all seem to know a lot about Deidara and his art.

At the punk shows, Itachi never feels out of place, just distant, but here, he feels like there’s something he’s missing, that even Shisui understands, a constant wave of words and whispers and people huddled together, on their phones and ready for something they all expect.

“I forgot about his groupies.” Shisui says, then, under his breath, “fucking sellout.”

Without warning, something that sounds like a gunshot goes off, but what little he knows about Deidara and the flash in the night sky tells Itachi it was probably an explosion, just loud enough to shut everyone up and leave only a trace of ringing in his ears.

Itachi turns to the direction it came from to see, in the distance across the yard, a freight car become illuminated by industrial floodlights, revealing its top to be adorned by a ten-foot-tall white bird statue and Deidara himself, standing next to it, holding a megaphone.

“I’m going to blow this sculpture I made with an IED.” Deidara announces. Itachi watches him jump off and run towards the crowd, almost halfway there when the detonation is initialized.

It’s loud. And bright. Like a special effect, a ball of fire engulfs the statue and the car beneath it, hot enough that Itachi can feel the heat brush his skin from dozens of meters away. Burning debris is scattered around the initial location, chunks of the sculpture that will eventually burn to nothing.

Everyone around him seems thrilled. The round of applause that follows is almost as loud as the explosion. Itachi isn’t the type to encourage people like this, though, and neither is Shisui, who taps his shoulder before pointing towards the car.

“Do you want to—” he starts, before being cut off by Deidara’s voice over the megaphone.

“That’s it. You can leave now.” Says Deidara.

“—to say hi. So that we can go.” Shisui says.

Itachi nods, even though he know the answer he’s looking for is Itachi just saying they can go.

He pushes past the crowd towards where he thinks Deidara is, where a circle of people has formed around him. He looks enamored by the attention.

“Can I have your picture?” he hears someone ask.

“Yeah, but let me take my shirt off for it,” Deidara replies, before stripping off his top. “There—oh shit. Everyone fuck off for a second.” Deidara pushes up to Itachi.

“Did you like it?” Deidara asks, looking up at him. “What was your favorite part? What was your interpretation of it?”

“You just blew up a statue. I liked that, the explosion part.”

Deidara’s eyes fill with light. “You understand,” he gleams, before turning around to the crowd now surrounding _them_ to announce. “You’re all fake fucks.”

Nobody reacts to this.

“They all think,” Deidara starts, back to Itachi now, “that it’s about the statue. That it’s about like, the deep meaning of destroying something I spent hours of my life on. It’s fucking not. It’s always been about the explosions, Itachi.”

Itachi nods. Deidara is so explicit, comprehensible in a way that’s strangely effortless.

He recalls Shisui calling him a psychopath.

He understands that, too.

“Come with me.” Deidara says. A suggestion, a statement, almost a command. Their conversation feels private, even among the crowd of people waiting to talk to Deidara, surrounding them from every angle. Itachi feels separate from them again, but it doesn’t carry the hollowness from before.

Itachi doesn’t get the chance to answer before he feels him grab his wrist and pull, walking away from the crowd like he doesn’t care that they all came for him, back towards the site of the explosion. Itachi looks behind to check if anyone is trailing after them, catching sight of Shisui, who waves and points to the car again. Itachi waves back.

It’s brighter over here, where the lights were left on. Itachi can see Deidara bristle as a breeze rolls by.

“Do you want my sweater?” he asks, pulling his hand away to take it off.

“Hm?” is all Deidara can get out, before Itachi shoves it over his head.

It’s too big on him. The sleeves cover his hands completely.

“Fuck off.” Is all he has to say about that. He pushes the sleeves up to his elbows.

“You looked cold.”

“I looked _hot_.” He glares at him. “And you, what’s the point of taking off your shirt if you have one on underneath? Whatever.” Deidara grabs him again, this time by the hand, and keeps walking.

They approach a motorcycle, which Deidara proceeds to mount. “Get on. Pussy.”

Itachi is not sure what he’s done to earn that title. He gets on anyways.

Deidara move his hair to in front of his shoulders, then reaches back to grab Itachi’s hands again and wrap them around his torso. “Don’t let go.”

The ignition is almost as loud as the explosion and draws just as much attention. Connected to him like this, Itachi wonders if being like Deidara is always like this, obnoxious and obvious. It’s kind of nice, watching people stare as they speed by too close and too fast.

Deidara drives as recklessly as Itachi expected, weaving in between cars, into the other lane, going through red lights and driving on the shoulder. It feels dangerous, but it feels safe, like it’s all control, like the route of everyone else is planned, scripted by Deidara at the millisecond they would come into contact with each other.

They’re headed towards downtown. Deidara turns his head over his shoulder and shouts “We’re going on a tour!” before whipping his head back in time to notice he’s drifting into the other lane, which he quickly remedies by jolting into that lane’s shoulder.

The city is never empty, but at this time of night, it almost feels like it. Deidara’s tour starts on a major street and consists of him slowing down enough to point out locations where he’s placed explosives. All along the sidewalk, or in the greenery of a lane divider, appearing intention, a result of urban planning and city taxes.

“I made that,” Deidara says, pointing to a life size metal statue of a city official, placed on a pedestal of a street corner. “I hate that bitch. It’s not actually bronze, I just made it look like that. They’re all clay.”

Or, sometimes Itachi can’t even see them, like “There’s a ceramic bird in that flowerbox,” or “I just replaced one of the bricks.”

He doesn’t question it. Deidara doesn’t explain any further. There’s a present implication that all these things are rigged to explode.

“We can do one now.”

“What?”

Deidara pulls over and pulls out a flip phone.

“I can just set one of them off. They’re all rigged separately.”

There’s nobody around to see it, really. Itachi wonders why Deidara’s willing to sacrifice people’s attention on such a whim.

“Can you do that one in the fountain?” Itachi asks.

Deidara beams. “You have immaculate taste, Itachi,” he tells him, before revving his engine and speeding off to their destination. Itachi feels like they’re going faster than they have all night. It’s getting harder to breathe. His cheeks hurt. He tries to stop smiling.

The fountain in question is a creation of contemporary architecture, a pseudo-gothic design in the middle of a square in the middle of town.

Deidara stops and parks on the side of the street, about fifty feet away, from the fountain, a shining beacon of LED lighting and unfiltered water. “They didn’t even notice I put an entire tier on top of it. It’s fucking three feet taller and doesn’t even have water at the top and nobody questioned that.”

They only walk about twenty feet closer, because Deidara warns that, “The concrete might concuss you when it starts raining down.”

Deidara stands next to him while he dials a number.

“Press call.” Deidara says, shoving the phone into his hands. “You can keep it, by the way. Until next time.”

Itachi presses the button.

He thinks about _next time._

“Now watch.”

Itachi stares at the target in anticipation, until seconds later, when the explosion sounds, and water jets ten meters up into the sky, along with remnants of the fountain. He feels like he should have flinched, but stays still, as droplets water land on his face and as the remaining base pool of the fountain continues to spew out water, broken pipes shooting up into the sky, illuminated by streetlights and the still-functioning electrical fixtures. Water and concrete drop in front of them as car alarms begin to sound.

It was amazing to watch. As over as soon as it happened, Itachi thinks it was as beautiful as it was pointless.

“How fantastic,” he says out loud. Loud enough for Deidara to hear, over the water raining down around them.

“You think so?” Deidara says, still looking towards the fountain.

“Your art is fantastic,” he says, turning to Deidara this time.

Deidara does not say thank you, but he does turn to face Itachi, face glistening with water and light, smiling as his eyeliner makes tear-track stains down his cheeks.

He steps closer and puts an arm around Itachi’s neck, bringing him down to match his height and quickly, messily, kisses him, on the cheek, then on the lips, and Itachi reciprocates, putting his arms around Deidara’s back, up his neck, to the back of his head.

Itachi is surrounded by rain and light and alarms and something else, a prolonged explosion inside of him around him, a fireball fueled by Deidara.

Then, though.

Sirens, and Itachi’s eye snap open to see red and blue lights.

“Fuck,” says Deidara, pulling away. He’s still smiling. “We gotta go,” he says, but hardly looks upsets, or even sounds it.

They’re on the motorcycle again before the police cars (at least three of them) get to the fountain. If Deidara’s driving was reckless before, it’s something else entirely now, as he traverses onto sidewalks and down pedestrian-only alleyways.

The police are still behind them, though, and Itachi wonders if this was part of it, if the chase was the final element of his plan for the night, or if every decision is made the second it’s thought-up. The cars behind them get closer and Deidara goes faster, then turns, slows down, changes directions, and then they’re behind them again.

They’re closer than before now. Deidara turns quickly, then takes a detour through a park, unlit and empty, before slowing down just enough to maneuver himself and use both arms to shove Itachi off the side, where he lands in the grass on his knees.

“Don’t lose that phone,” Deidara reminds him. It’s too dark to see, but Itachi thinks he’s still smiling. He pulls a U-turn and exits the way he came before Itachi can look any closer, and the convoy follows.

Itachi stands up slowly and watches them disappear into the night, and then calls an Uber.

-

The next morning, Itachi wakes up later than usual, to a phone screen full of notifications from… mostly Shisui.

_did u get home okay?_

_I just read the news did u guys blow that fountain up or was that just him_

_itachi are u okay??_

_sasuke said u got home okay nvm_

_everyone is really concerned that Deidara is missing I told them he’s fine but lol I don’t think u can come to shows w me again until he shows up :( they all saw u leave with him_

Deidara is missing?

Itachi pulls up his news feed to a majority of the results being about an exploding fountain and a resulting police chase. Every article indicates the culprit still at large.

Well.

There’s one positive.

Itachi looks at the flip phone he left on his nightstand, then goes to look around for a charging cable for it.

The pit in his stomach, he thinks, is due to more than just the apparent lack of success in keeping the scene alive.

-

Itachi washes the grass stains out of his pants.

-

He wonders if the sweater he gave Deidara shrunk from being wet. Maybe it will fit him now.

-

Itachi waits a day before revisiting the site of the fountain. It’s covered in caution tape and guarded by cops. The phone feels heavy in his pocket.

Itachi wonders what pressing redial would do.

He refrains.

There is no news of Deidara, whether his return to the punk house or his impending arrest.

-

Itachi wonders if they’re tracking the phone he keeps carrying around with him.

Then he wonders if Deidara even knows its number.

Then he wonders if it’s another bomb, rigged to explode when it’s called.

Deidara doesn’t show up today, either.

-

Itachi checks the news for other recent reports bombings.

There are none. He fights off the disappointment, and some other identifiable emotions.

Shisui tells him they’re going to have a “Deidara memorial show” at the punk house at the end of the week.

“They told me you can come if you want, but I don’t know if I’ll go. I don’t really want to remember him.”

-

Itachi knits a sweater a size too small for him with the numbers “1312” across the front.

Just in case.

-

At midnight, exactly a week after the fountain explosion, Itachi gets a call from an unknown number.

On his real phone, not the… other one.

_“Do you want to come to the memorial show with me?”_

“I don’t think that they want me to come.”

_“I’m on my way to pick you up.”_

-

Itachi’s doorbell rings. The camera that connects to the intercom is either destroyed or covered: the video feed shows up black.

He takes the sweater he made and the cellphone (fully charged) outside with him to find Deidara waiting for him outside the closed gates at the end of his driveway, perched on his motorcycle with the engine running.

“Why are you rich?” Deidara demands. “Redistribute your wealth.”

“I made you this sweater.” Itachi deflects.

This was a good enough answer, apparently. Deidara strips off his t-shirt and drops it on the pavement. “Your art’s nice too, Itachi.” He comments, reading the numbers on the front before putting it on. “Fuck cops.”

“Fuck cops,” Itachi parrots. The sun has gone down, but his cheeks still feel hot.

Deidara revs his engine and heads towards downtown. The show is the other way.

“We’re gonna be late. I wanted to show you something first.” Deidara tells him, before lane splitting his way past dozens of cars in standstill traffic. “Get the phone out.”

Itachi does, relinquishing one of the arms he instinctively had wrapped around Deidara’s waist. Deidara lists off a phone number. “Don’t press call until I tell you.”

It’s just past sunset. The sky is getting darker, but still tinted orange towards the west, the same color as the fireball Itachi saw at Deidara’s last official art show.

“Push it now,” Deidara says, just barely audible above the sound of his engine.

Itachi does.

In front of them, on the left and right sides of the street, the tops of two light posts explode. Itachi watches the American flags attached to them go up in flames and disintegrate into ash, raining down on the pedestrians and cars below. Their screaming is loud. Deidara’s laughter, right in front of him, is louder.

“Amazing.” Itachi tells him.

“It gets better,” Deidara says, taking off, driving directly down the middle of the street. Deidara’s speed is in sync with the chain of rigged explosive light posts that line the street, each detonating as they drive past.

Deidara’s route follows the same one he showed Itachi earlier, of inconspicuous art installations that are bombs in disguise. The streetlights in parallel stop, and the random ones begin, still going off the second they pass. Itachi catches a glimpse of fire and hazard lights in Deidara’s rearview. He looks ahead to see a fake traffic light explode, still hanging to its post as it burns.

Some of them are huge, other fountains, other statues, and some of them are barely noticeable, figurines left at bus stops only big enough to make people jump. Itachi feels like his eyes are trained to catch all of them, like he has the awareness to predict the pattern.

“I didn’t make the last one myself,” Deidara admits. “We have to go back to get to it.”

Deidara turns around, cutting off several cars. He speeds up again, almost at the speed they had during their police chase. The fires left in their wake are almost nothing, just brief glimpses of light.

There’s a police barricade forming on the opposite side of the road, in front of where the first explosions went off.

“Fuck. We were a little early.” Deidara says.

Early for—oh.

The police car blocking traffic explodes in front of them, in a huge ball of flames that’s bright enough for Itachi to need to squint as he watches the car’s body flip, landing with a metal crash and becoming engulfed by smoke and flame. The windows all shatter as the metal of the frame creaks with the impact. Several car alarms go off. Several more people scream.

Itachi is genuinely speechless. Deidara yells as they drive past it, “ _That’s for fucking tailing me for two hours, pigs.”_

Itachi hugs him tighter.

They arrive at the house, no cops in sight. Itachi is more relieved for Deidara than he is for himself.

“You liked it, right?” Deidara asks.

“I loved it.” Itachi tells him. He pulls him into a kiss. It feels like the right thing to do. Emotionally and physically. Deidara pulls away after a moment to lead them to the door and kick it open. Nobody is upstairs. The light and sound coming from the basement tells them the show has already started.

“Let’s go crash my own funeral,” he says.

Deidara holds Itachi’s hand as he walks downstairs, and as he elbows his way past the audience of his mourning admirers, who have started to recognize Deidara. A wave of conversation fills the crowd, but the band doesn’t stop playing until Deidara takes the mic out from in front of the lead singer and says, “Anyone who actually thinks I died is a normie.”

The crowd goes insane. Deidara is instantly mobbed by his fans, but he turns around before he has to talk to any of them, looping his arms around Itachi’s neck and jumping to hook his legs around his torso. He kisses him again, messy and passionate, almost knocking Itachi off balance.

Everyone is screaming around them. Itachi kind of hates it, so takes Deidara and carries him upstairs. Some people actually follow them.

Deidara jumps down.

“Fuck off.” He tells them. They listen. Then, to Itachi, “Let’s go blow up that phone in the backyard.”

They attach it to a firecracker and set it off.

“This one doesn’t count as art,” Deidara tells him. “We just had to do this.”

Itachi understands.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! 
> 
> any and all comments are so appreciated!!
> 
> i’m jinchuurikies on twt/tumblr if u want to talk :)


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